Dewa has seen where the laundry is ironed. Men spread out the clothes on the padded surfaces of their wooden carts in the streets and wield their irons. Streets which teem with life. Open stalls heaped with bags of grain, of jaggery moulded into coconut shapes. Streets with open drains in which black pigs wallow like huge bandicoots. Crowds gather beside a tree where a miracle has taken place. Milk exudes from its trunk. People have decked it with offerings of flower garlands and saffron cloth while the Brahmin priests chant Sanskrit slokas and offer poojas to the tree. Dewa thinks of the temple sculptures, of the goddesses that wind their limbs around the trees, cling to the fruit-and flower-filled branches. Anywhere on the street can be found temples, shrines, gods. Here you can pray, do penance, engage in barter and trade. There is no one to interrupt your private pilgrimage. But you must have a room where you can close the door, finger your thoughts like prayer beads as you recollect, meditate.

The room boys are scuttling all over the place, little boys who fetch and carry, going up and down in lifts with flasks and water jugs and bedding, but there is no one to actually do what you really need to get done. The room is hot and close. An extra bed is needed. Here, in this country, a little space can be shared by many. A double room can be easily converted into a family room. It does not matter how many members belong to that family. Space is an extension of the mind, so that you can fill it with the dimensions of your thoughts or with as many manifestations of your being, of your self as you wish. You can generate sakti, the female principle, and become Parvati, or Uma, Bhairavi, Ambika, Sati, Gauri, Kali or Durga and Kailasa will accommodate you and all your offspring. There is space here for all these manifestations. But Sri, Dewa and Anna need that extra bed. There is no difficulty, people accept that you have needs; Dewa has learned that much so far on this journey.

A room has four walls; you can do as you please within them. The room belongs to you while you are here and there are no inroads on your most sacred privacy. It is the inner sanctum of the temple, while the crowds mill around the courtyard and jostle you in the great halls.

‘Yes, yes,’ the manager says, ‘we can provide extra bed. You pay a little more. Sixty-five rupees for double. Fifteen rupees more for bed.’

‘Where is the bed?’ Dewa asks. ‘Where are you going to put it?’

‘We will bring now.’

After a long wait a bed is brought. It is a soiled, stained mattress with soiled, stained pillows. The linen is soiled too. Other pilgrims, other transients have left the impress of their memories, as if their reluctant psyches still remain.